Collaboration & co-operation
Sharing skills, resources, experience and lessons learned within and across sectors and portfolios — including, critically, where risks were realised rather than only where things went well.
Assurance that changes the decision, not just the record.
An independent, risk-based review of whether a project or portfolio is set up to deliver what was promised — with findings validated by the people doing the work.
Why project assurance
Six reasons sponsors commission it
Assurance is not another layer of reporting. Done properly it is the mechanism that tells an investor whether the reporting they already receive can be believed.
Effective use of resources
A risk-based approach that orients higher levels of assurance and resource toward high-risk, high-priority projects — instead of spreading scrutiny evenly and thinly across everything.
Continuous improvement
Monitoring and reporting enable a genuine lessons-learned approach, so that capital planning and procurement models can be adjusted over time rather than repeating the same structural mistake.
Visibility
Transparency over time, cost, quality and scope performance — as well as the emerging risks and the benefits actually being achieved, which are usually reported least well of all.
Informed decision-making
Greater analytic support for the investor — public or private — both before an investment decision is taken and after, when the question becomes whether to continue, correct or stop.
Stakeholder confidence
Improved confidence in project planning and cost estimates — and a defensible account of whether overall value for money is being achieved.
The review
Our five-step assurance review
Structured enough to be comparable across a portfolio, flexible enough to go where the evidence leads.
1
Prepare
Set the engagement up so the review can be both fast and defensible.
- Agree the scope of the engagement with the sponsor
- Request the relevant collateral
- Agree stakeholders and plan the interviews
2
Review
Establish what is actually true today, as distinct from what is being reported.
- Review the collateral
- Conduct stakeholder interviews
- Establish baselines
- Identify areas requiring further investigation
3
Assess performance
Test delivery against original intent — not against a baseline quietly revised along the way.
- Assess outcomes against objectives and intent
- Assess functional effectiveness, including structures, roles and processes
4
Validate
Put the findings back in front of the people who will have to act on them.
- Capture lessons learnt and outline recommendations
- Validate findings with stakeholders
5
Report
Land the findings with enough clarity that a decision follows.
- Prepare the final report — findings, themes for improvement, areas of success, and recommendations
- Present the report to the sponsor and governance forum
Continuous assurance
One review tells you where you are. A cadence tells you where you are heading.
Run continuously, assurance stops being an audit event and becomes a steering instrument: reviewing lifecycle and portfolio trends to identify what requires prioritised action, while there is still time for the action to matter.
That is also where the risk-based principle earns its keep — assurance effort moves toward the projects that are drifting, and away from the ones that are not.
What you receive
- An established baseline for time, cost, quality and scope
- An assessment of outcomes against original objectives and intent
- A view on functional effectiveness — structures, roles and processes
- Findings validated with stakeholders before they are published
- A final report with themes for improvement, areas of success and forward recommendations
- Captured lessons learnt, in a form the next project can actually use
Need an independent view?
Tell us about the project or portfolio, and we will scope a review that answers the question you actually have.